


Ruins of Troy

by HailMary



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Genre: Angst, M/M, Song Lyrics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-10
Updated: 2014-02-10
Packaged: 2018-01-11 21:56:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1178387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HailMary/pseuds/HailMary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Achilles waits for Patroclus in the underworld, but Apollo has other plans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ruins of Troy

**Author's Note:**

> I have recently been made aware that there is [art](http://niarchery.tumblr.com/post/101015178418/achilles-i-have-found-you-based-on-the) for this story!
> 
> Thank you to [niachery](http://niarchery.tumblr.com/) on tumblr for your beautiful work!

I heard the faint thrum of the arrow seconds before it reached the flesh of my body. I believed that my muscles would betray me again and move me from the path of the arrow; in defiance of my bleeding heart and bloodied soul, my body refused to let me die. My feet remained swift and my legs strong. I had grown accustomed to them working independent of my wishes.

But I did not move. I turned my head toward the thrum, hardly daring to hope. I felt the sharp point of the arrow part the skin of my back. Thick muscle and slick bone greeted the shaft as it passed through my chest. My body spilled its blood in welcome, in tribute, like oil from an urn. I closed my eyes.

 _Thank the gods,_ I thought. _Finally_.

For the first time since I failed Patroclus, I felt something other than wild oscillations of rage and despair. I felt relief. As I fell forward, arrow through my heart, I smiled.

My last thought was: _Patroclus_.

 

* * *

 

I awoke in Elysium. I awoke in a nightmare.

I could not find Patroclus. Darkness of the texture one finds in the depths of a cave or the bottom of the sea ran unbroken in all directions. My skill with a spear was useless, the grace of my former body laughable. The relief I had felt as my blood pooled onto hot dirt mocked me. I could not find him.

Heroes wandered around me, through me, their souls idle with death. Heracles appeared in the swirling dark, and Perseus, fellow students of Chiron. I howled into the ether, a wounded animal. No one heard me.

 _Patroclus_. I repeated his name, over and over. _Patroclus. Patroclus_. Eternities passed and time stood still. Nothing held meaning, not in this thrice-cursed dark. Not without Patroclus.

Alone, I raged. Where was he? He had promised to wait for me among the shades. For one shameful moment, I wondered if perhaps this was his punishment for me. I had refused to fight. I had chosen my pride, my _hubris_ , over my love for him. I had sent him to his death. I had strapped him into the armor myself.

Then I remembered how Patroclus’ large, dark eyes had shone brighter than the hammered gold of my helm. The determined clench of his jaw. His rough hand gripping mine from the back of the chariot. I thought we had time, but that was no excuse.

No. Patroclus was kind and loyal. He was not me. I could not imagine a world where he would abandon me. If he was not in the underworld, it was because he could not travel to the underworld.

I raged anew. I felt cheated. Powerless. Empty. I knew I could not face death on my own, anymore than I could face life. I had not the strength. There had to be another way.    

As I quieted, I sat on the banks of the River Lethe and let my hand trail through oblivion. The river’s black water was sluggish and brittle and so cold that fat disks of ice bobbed in the ebb and flow of the river’s current.

Perhaps this was our chance. If Patroclus could not come to me, I would go to him. I would drink the water of the River Lethe and be reincarnated. To drink the water of the River Lethe was to forget your past life, but I was certain that I would not forget Patroclus. If I knew nothing else, I knew that my soul would always know his. When I was born again, I would return to Troy. I would make sure our ashes rested together. I would make things right.

I could do it. I knew I could do it. Besides, a timeless forever of waiting was beyond me.

I sat on the river bank, my legs folded beneath me, my hand moving through the water. Years passed in aching darkness. I would find Patroclus. I swore it to myself. I would find him. There was nothing else.

I shaped my hands into a loose bowl and let the river’s water fill them. The water burned as it touched my lips, though I knew the burn was not real, for my lips were not real. I was a shade. I swallowed down the icy water, determined to start again.

Immediately, golden light cleaved the air around me. The dark cracked in two, like an egg, and out of the void stepped a man. Shining brown hair fell in waves to his broad shoulders and brushed the top of the bow slung across his chest. The man had smooth, golden skin. Black eyes. A beauty so radiant it stole my breath.

The depth of my desire was such that I believed, for one wild moment, that Patroclus had come to me.

Then the man smiled, and in his smile I saw my mother. I saw a god. Everything I had wanted to be. A destroyer of lives.

I let my phantom lips curl. This one would receive no deference from me. “Apollo.”

Apollo’s black eyes flattened and his smile turned stale, hard as old bread. My mother had taught me early that there were consequences to angering a god. I cared not. I had nothing left to lose.

“Why are you drinking from the Lethe, Pelides?” Apollo asked. “Are you missing something, perhaps?”

My hand grasped for a spear that was not there.

“You have brought this on yourself,” Apollo said, off-handed, as if speaking to a slave or a child that he did not have time for. “You burned my temples. You desecrated the body of my chosen. You go against me still. Your crimes cannot go unpunished.”

The light around Apollo increased steadily, like dawn breaking over the ocean. I had seen nothing but the dark for so long.  I could not look away.

“Where is Patroclus?” I demanded. _Why was he not waiting amongst the shades?_

“To learn that, you must speak with your kin.” Apollo’s light continued to grow. He was a terrible sight. “Your mother and son would not have your monument dishonored with his name. That, however, is not my concern.”

I staggered back in the face of Apollo’s revelation. Not Agamemnon, then. Not Menelaus, not Odysseus. The betrayal had come from my mother and my son. Apollo called them my kin, but they were not my kin. Patroclus was my only kin. My feet hit the river.

“I know what it is to lose a lover,” Apollo said, his words falling from his beautiful lips like notes from a lyre. The lyre was the instrument of Apollo. To think, I had once believed my skill at playing would be enough to keep Patroclus at my side. “I would not allow Hades to claim the soul of Hyacinth. I kept him for myself, because I would not be parted from him. That is to be your punishment. You will never forget. You will never be reborn. You will remain here, alone, without your philtatos, until the stars fall from the heavens.”

Panic coursed through me, chilling my blood to the same temperature as the river swirling around my ankles. No. I had to get to Patroclus. He needed me. Apollo could not trap me here. I would fight him.   

I lifted my hands and dropped into a crouch. Apollo smiled benevolently and lifted his hands, a shining reflection of my own stance. Then he flung his arms wide and the brilliant light that had been collecting around him burst in all directions.

My back hit the water. The air rushed from my lungs, only to be replaced with frigid water. My ribs squeezed together like two hands crushing a beetle. My hands clawed for purchase, and my legs flicked like a dolphin’s tail. I was powerless. I sank like a stone thrown into a still pond, the violence of my intrusion rippling out in every direction.

I could not breathe. I was drowning. I felt myself hit the river bed and immediately gathered myself for a push to the surface, but I could not. The water above me was freezing now in cascading patterns of ice crystals that fanned across my field of vision. Then the ice reached my body, pressing hard against my eyes, my chest, my thighs. I could not see. I could not move.

The light faded, but the ice remained. I waited for something, anything, to shift, but nothing did. I was trapped.

I had never been one for thinking – of the two of us, Patroclus was the thoughtful one; he was my balance in that way – but once my shade was banished to the bottom of the River Lethe, I had nothing to do but think. Even if Patroclus made his way to the underworld, to Elysium, he would not find me. Apollo had made sure of it.

I was the ghost of a ghost, and for the next infinity, all I did was think.

And think.

And think.

And think.

 _Patroclus_.

 

* * *

 

Time did not exist under the ice. I was always aware, always present; there was no before or after, only now. It was torture for one who had lived his entire life in service to a future he would never see. I was a fly trapped in amber, perfectly preserved in the moment of my imprisonment.

That was why I did not realize something was changing until I was already moving. I heard great booms, reminiscent of the sounds siege stones made as they crashed into the walls of cities. The vibrations that followed flowed through me, rattling my shade within my tomb of ice. As soon as the booms died, I dismissed them.

But the booms only grew louder. Louder and closer.

Then, with one last, great vibration, the ice around me broke apart. I gasped as liquid touched my skin. Disoriented, I followed my instincts, which had always been excellent. I turned my body until the river bed was beneath my feet and _pushed._ I did not question.

Movement. Oh, to move, even as a shade, was pure bliss. I wanted to laugh. I wanted to laugh the way I used to laugh.

I swept my arms in front of me, careful not to scrape myself against the large chunks of ice still floating in the river. With steady movements, I dragged myself forward until my hand touched a surface that was not water. Worryingly, the surface also was not air.

I kicked slowly, keeping myself in place as I felt along the strange surface. The River Lethe had acquired a ceiling, apparently. A ceiling made of…I scratch my fingers along the surface and felt something go under my nails. Dirt. There was dirt above me.

I swam along the dirt ceiling, searching for a clear path out of the river. Nothing. I kept swimming and wished for Patroclus. He was clever, more so than I. I created problems, he solved them. He would know.

But I did not have Patroclus, only myself. My heart was a hummingbird in my chest, fluttering madly, yearning for escape. Desperate, I decided to walk the only road available to me; rather than simply run my hands along the dirt ceiling, I thrust my fist deep into the soil and pulled.

At first, the dirt simply rained into the water. Soon, though, I had torn enough of the dirt away to make an opening large enough for my head. For the first time in a very long time, I felt air. I _breathed_.  

Unsure of how much dirt lay above me, I started to climb. I wedge myself into the densely packed soil, my fingers seeking crevasses and pockets of air. I struggled and climbed, the dirt choking me, filling my mouth, nose, ears. As far as I climbed, there was only more dirt.

That is, until there wasn’t. With one last thrust of my hand, I broke through. I had reached the top.

I hooked my hands into the soft soil, and hauled myself out of the ground and into another world.

At first it was painful. I was surrounded by hideously bright light. Even closed, the brilliance pierced my eyes like daggers. This must have been Apollo’s doing. My punishment began with his light. This felt the same. I clasped my hands tightly over my eyes.

“Apollo!” I called the god’s name, reckless. Calling on the gods was always reckless. “Apollo!”

There was no answer.

I forced myself into calm as I lay on the ground, palms pressed into my eyes. _Adjust_ , I told myself. _Let it come_.

I breathed. As I breathed, other sensations made themselves known. Warmth, for one. Actual warmth, as I had not felt since I last held Patroclus. He had been nothing but warmth.

But also, there were smells. Sweet, green grass. Disturbed earth. And, wafting on the soft breeze that danced through the hair across my forehead, something gritty and harsh. Something I had never smelled before.

When I could stand it, I opened my eyes. One glance confirmed that this was not Elysium. This was not the underworld at all. I saw tall, straight trees covered in needles swaying in the wind. A river, a true river, ran broad and tranquil to my left. I tilted my head to the sky and saw puffy white clouds wandering through a field of deep blue.

With no little trepidation, I looked down. I was naked. I shook my head. Dirt flew in all directions as my hair whipped around my head. I lifted my hands. I touched myself: my cheeks, my shoulders, my belly. My feet. I placed a finger against my neck and felt the blood pulsing underneath like a war drum.

I had sprung fully formed from the earth like Athena from the head of Zeus. I lived again.

I was also confused. None of this was familiar. The plants, the mountains in the distance, the smell of the air – I had encountered none of them before. This place was not Troy. It was not even Greece.

And, of course, I was still alone.

I lay back in the dirt, eyes closed, and let the sun wash over my skin.

When I could stand it, I decided to call on the gods. Apollo had not answered, perhaps another would. I called on all I knew that might be sympathetic to my cause, or to Patroclus: Artemis, Athena, Hera. There was no answer. Aphrodite, Zeus himself.

Nothing.

Perhaps the gods ignored me. I had nothing to offer them, after all, nothing to sacrifice, although I did hope my name would count for something. Perhaps they did not hear.

Finally, my options run dry, I called to my mother. The words were ashes on my mouth, but I would see her again if it meant I could help Patroclus. I called out to her, even going so far as to step into the river. It was not salt, not sea, but it was better than dry land.

Silence.

I sat on the ground near the river and gathered myself. The demands of my body were making themselves known. Hunger. Thirst. I needed to find others.

I trailed my hands through damp river gravel absentmindedly, my fingers encountering small, smooth stones. I plucked three, four, five stones from the gravel and set to juggling. The simple activity was as easy as it had ever been. My grace, at least, had not deserted me.

Then the thought struck me: _Patroclus loved to watch me juggle_. I let the stones fall at my feet. His absence was a pit in my soul. The abyss called to me as I had called to the gods, urging me to plunge back into darkness. I could not allow myself to answer its call.

I sighed. Then I climbed to my feet and started to run.

I would run back to Troy, gods be damned.

I ran through the woods. Blood coursed through me and air flooded my lungs. Sharp stones and twigs dug into my feet. I heard noises in the distance, strange sounds. I angled my body toward them and continued.

Finally, I reached a clearing filled with people. They milled around in strange clothing, held strange objects, and spoke a language I had never heard before. I stopped dead, unsure. Was there danger here? How could I tell?

I wondered exactly how much time had passed in the world of the living while I lay trapped in the underworld.

An old woman turned away from her group and saw me where I lurked at the edge of the wood. Without thought, I shifted my weight to both feet equally. Muscles coiled in my legs. I did not need a spear to defeat these people, whoever they were.

Like a rabbit recognizing the shadow of a hawk, the woman froze, a large platter of food held in her hands. Her eyes traveled down from my dirt-streaked face to my naked hips to my bloody feet.     

She dropped the platter to the ground and screamed.

The others stopped and turned. They came for me. I fought, and brought a few of them down, but they had weapons I had never seen. One man pointed a black object at me, and I fell as if hit with lightning.

I was wrong. I could defeat no one.

 

* * *

 

More than three years have passed since I clawed my way out of the underworld. 1144 days. 27465 hours. 1647902 minutes. I know this in the same way I know that 3200 years have passed since my death, give or take a few decades – the people in this age are obsessed with time.

Timekeeping tools are everywhere. The people now do not use the contraptions we used in Greece, the _clepsydrae_ ; the timekeepers of today, _clocks,_ are eerily accurate and ubiquitous. They tick on every wall. They chime in city squares. They glow brightly from the inside of cars – fascinating, dangerous machines that have taken the place of horses. People carry clocks in their bags, in their pockets, even strapped to their wrists.

The result is that, unlike the timeless torment of my tomb in the Lethe, I am now aware of every second that passes. I am painfully, excruciatingly aware. I always know the time.

There are other things I know now. I know, for instance, that the old gods – my gods – are gone. No one knows exactly when it happened. Somewhere along the line humanity had stopped believing. With no one to worship in their temples or sacrifice in their name, the gods had simply disappeared.

 _Good riddance to them_ , I think.

Another god has risen in their place. A God. A nameless, unknowable being, far above the squabbling and petty politics the old gods had engaged in. The old gods were so incredibly human in that way. The new God is not.

But it is still not enough. From what I understand of such things, the new God is also fading. Humanity does not need him anymore. We do not need any gods now, if we ever did. I see that now. The gods made me – made us mortals – believe that if we could do great deeds in life and gain enough honor, that we would receive a place in the heavens. We would blaze across the night sky, our images etched in light, eternal. I believed that, before I knew what a star truly was. 

And that would be a third thing I know now. Science.

When I first encountered the people of this time, I did not understand how to move through this new world. I had to learn what others had known since early childhood. How to turn on a light. How to go up an escalator. How to buckle a seat belt. Patroclus would have laughed to see me humbled so. I was the greatest warrior of our generation, feared and respected by nations, and I did not know how to tie the laces of my shoes. All of this was made more difficult by the fact that I spoke a language as dead as the gods. _Ancient Greek_ , the people now called it. It took me years to learn a few modern tongues, the Greek of today and English.

Once I could communicate with the people around me, it became clear they believed me insane. They told me that I had suffered a _psychotic break_. I spoke of Patroclus, and they told me I was _delusional_. I cried my grief at our separation, and they told me I had _depression_.

At first, I tried to prove myself by demonstrating my skill with the blade and spear. My keepers were not impressed. I learned quickly that people no longer cared for warriors. The number of enemies you had killed on the field of battle is not what people sing about anymore. Instead, creativity is valued. Writers, singers, and players are the new heroes. Intelligence is valued as well, and kindness. Doctors are heroes too.

 _Patroclus, my love,_ I think often. _You were born ahead of your time. Aristos Achaion, indeed._           

And beauty, of course, still holds great power. I have always understood in an abstract way that my looks are pleasing – Patroclus had often told me as much – but my other gifts were great enough that I had never had to rely on my beauty. I rely on it now. People are more patient with me if I arch my back where they can see. They are more generous if I let my hair fall across my eyes.   

I believe this is why I was finally released from the institution where I was kept. I pretended that my name was not Achilles. I pretended like I had never fought in Troy, like I had never killed, like my mother was not a long-dead sea-nymph, like the other half of my soul wasn’t wandering alone in a place now called _Turkey._ I pretended, and the psychiatrist took in my tight jeans, my thin shirt stretched tight across the muscles of my chest, my sharp cheek bones, my slanted eyes, and my soft blond hair.

He said, “Well, you look good.” Then I was free. I was so much less than I had been, but I was free.

And now I am in Troy. Finding my way here was difficult. Nothing looks as it did, and the landscape has changed dramatically. I do not know where my people erected my monument after my death, but wherever they built it, it is gone now. I had hoped that once I arrived I would know what to do. That I would _feel_ Patroclus, or that his spirit would be waiting.

I do not feel him. No one waits for me.

For want of something better to do, I sit in the ruins of what was once Troy and survey the city. Only orderly piles of sun-bleached stone remain. I see the foundation of a dwelling here, the remnants of a well there.

I linger among the ruins, as broken as the smooth stone.

I lie back and look up at the night sky. I know what a star is now: a huge ball of hot, luminous gas located impossibly far from Earth. There are far fewer stars visible now than there had been in my time, but I know that even the number I could see then was the smallest slice of what actually existed. Someone had told me once, after I had learned modern Greek, of a machine that circled our planet. The machine was like a looking glass but far more powerful. Modern scientists had pointed the machine at a tiny piece of dark space between two stars. What had they found? Whole other galaxies. They found thousands upon thousands of galaxies in the tiny piece of darkness between two stars.

I turn away from the sky and press my cheek into the cool stone beneath me. What a fool I had been. An arrogant, blind, proud fool. I had actually believed that I could live forever. My mother had whispered to me of honor, godhood, _immortality_ , and I had believed her. I had sent Patroclus to his death, sentenced us both to misery without end, in pursuit of something that I now know is impossible.

Forget gods and heroes. Immortality is the real myth. In the face of the vast and untouchable universe, I can finally admit that. I can finally feel how small I really am.

My hands curl tightly and I shove them into the pockets of my jacket. I sit up, the wind blowing my hair as wild as Medusa’s. I remember something Odysseus once told me.

_We cannot say who will survive the holocaust of memory._

It pains me to admit that he was right. My name is still spoken by people today, but in just the way Patroclus had feared. People speak of my rage. They speak of how I desecrated the body of Hector. They speak of my weakness, and my ignoble death.

And worse, far worse – they do not speak of Patroclus at all. He was the true _Aristos Achaion_ , and I am the only one who remembers.

 

* * *

 

I return to the ruins often. I do not know what else to do.

Others visit the ruins, people called _tourists_. They come from all over the world to gawk at a history they do not understand. Sometimes they try to talk to me. I shrug my shoulders and walk away.

Most days I also do physical labor in exchange for money. My beauty and my strength are all I have left. I do not wish to sell myself, so I work. It is tedious, but necessary. There is not one moment that I do not miss Patroclus.

Little distinguishes one day from the next, other than the ticking of the clocks. After a while, I save enough to buy a guitar. I had tried to find a lyre, but they are no longer a fashionable instrument; no one sells them anymore. The guitar suits me nicely, however. It is similar to the lyre, and I have always had a gift for music.

After that, I take my guitar to the ruins. I sit in the grass, hands caressing the polished neck of my instrument, and make believe that Patroclus sits across from me. My hands move across strings made of some new synthetic rather than gut. My fingers strum half-remembered tunes, and I sing. The tourists throw money into the guitar case at my side. I take little notice.

I decide to write a new song in the modern style. I sit at my usual spot in the ruins and pull the guitar in my lap. I begin to play. The words take flight from my mouth, gliding low and soft.

 

_I made the wrong decision_

_Blinded by my pride_

_Drawing blood and giving blood_

_I drove you from my side_

_Each day fades into the next_

_Dead in all but name_

_A debate between my sorrow_

_And my tolerance for pain_

_Oh, my love, you have to know_

_It’s not the fight I miss_

_Come back to me_

_I’ll prove to you_

_This and this and this_

_I remember all of you_

_Your body next to mine_

_I dream of lips upon my lips_

_Like crushing grapes to wine_

_I swear to you, I’d beg the gods_

_Leave my honor at their shrine_

_To erase my name from history_

_And see you one last time_

_Oh, my love, you have to know_

_It’s not the fight I miss_

_Come back to me_

_I’ll prove to you_

_This and this and this_

_This and this and this_

The melody wells from the depths of my soul and spills onto the sun-drenched ground at my feet. My eyes are downcast as I play, fixed on the point where my fingers meet string. 

 _This and this and this,_ I sing. _This and this and this._

After I finish, I do not look up right away. I cannot. My breath comes quickly and my chest heaves, as if I have just run a great distance. My heart stampedes like a stallion. I feel as if it will burst out of me.

Finally, I lift my eyes. I blink hard as I do, for there, sitting across from me, is Patroclus.

His dark hair is wild and untamable, the only outward indication of the tempest within. The long line of his throat plunges into the delicate rise of his collar bones. The rest of him is hidden beneath clothes quite similar to my own, but there is no mistaking him.

I smile, the song lingering on my tongue like honeyed wine. I adore the sweetness. How can I not, when it has brought me this vision? I imagine Patroclus often, but my imaginings are usually not so vivid as this.

Patroclus smiles back. Kindness and love shine in his eyes, as bright as any light Apollo ever gave.

“ _Achilles_ ,” he says. “I’ve found you.”

I grip my guitar tighter to my chest.

He leans forward, closing the distance between us. “You look different,” he says. Then he touches my leg.

I jerk backwards. I felt that touch. _I felt that touch_.

“But you’re a shade,” I breathe.

“As are you,” he replies. He is even closer now, on his knees. His hands move from my leg to the exposed skin of my arms. I jerk again.       

My hands move of their own accord to hold his face. I hold him steady and peer into his eyes. “What trickery is this?”

“No trickery,” he says. I feel his breath across my face. “Persephone told me of Apollo’s wrath, and how he trapped you in the River Lethe. When Apollo faded, you were released. I made a bargain with Hades long ago that if you were released, I would be released. But the world is not what it used to be. I am sorry that it took me this long to find you.”

“You were in the underworld?” I ask. I want to say so many other things, but I cannot find the words. Patroclus was always better with words than I.

“For almost as long as you.”

“Hades has not faded?” The question is meaningless, but to speak it gives me time. I need time. Time to brush my fingers over Patroclus’ brow, the ridge of his nose, the fat curves of his lips. I need this to be real.

Patroclus is doing the same to me. He smooths his hands over my shoulders and says, “The new God rules the heaven and earth, but he needed a partner to run the underworld. You’ve heard of the devil? That is Hades. Only, he is not what they say. He is much the same as always.”

I nearly choke on my laugh. The length of time since I’d last laughed is so great that I have forgotten how it’s done.

“How did you find me?” I ask.

Patroclus leans his forehead against mine. He is trembling in my arms. When I put my hand to the ground to steady myself, I realize that I am trembling too. This is real.

_Gods, this is real._

“I followed your song,” he says.  

I nod dumbly. It makes sense. Patroclus found me in Phthia, after all. He found me on Pelion and Scyros. What is one more miracle to a man whose existence is miraculous?

He pulls the guitar from my lap, sets it on the yellow grass beside us, and moves into the empty space. Tourist flow around us. From the corner of my eye, I can see them look. I care not.

“We shall never be parted,” I manage. I whisper the words into his ear, a sacred vow. It is the only divinity I need. “From this day forward. I swear it.”

“The last time you swore that to me, I did not believe you,” Patroclus answered. “And I was right. Our words did not save us.”

“Then what is different this time?”

I could feel Patroclus smile against my cheek before he spoke. “Only two things allow mortals to transcend their fate: great suffering and great love. Now, we know both. From this moment on, we write our own futures. I swear it.”

I wrap my arms around Patroclus for the first time in eternity, and I feel peace.


End file.
